Month: September 2018

Okay, that blog post title might be a bit misleading. My writing process doesn’t involve being abducted by aliens, at least I think it doesn’t. If I had been abducted by aliens, would I even remember? Would they have erased my memories?

But my writing process does involve research about alien abduction, as it figures into a sub-plot of my cozy mystery, Murder at the Marina.

To be honest, all that I knew about alien abduction came from watching The X-Files and that was a very long time ago, so I did a bit of internet research on the signs that someone has been abducted.

It was actually quite fascinating. I could actually check a number of items off of the list — like insomnia, seeing bright lights, and unexplained bruises — which had me a bit worried. Maybe I had been abducted.

Actually, my bruises can probably be easily explained. People who live on boats call them boat bites. Whether you’re working on boat projects or just trying to maneuver around the cramped spaces you find on boats, you’ll often end up banging into something. If you bruise easily, like I do, then you’ll end up with a lot of boat bites.

The bright lights are probably easily explained as well. We have a hatch over our bed which the moon shines through not to mention the big security light in the marina’s parking lot.

And the insomnia . . . well, that’s just probably a reflection of getting older. {Sigh}

Have you ever been abducted by aliens? Would you remember if you had been?

A dilapidated sailboat for your anniversary—not very romantic. A dead body on board—even worse.

If you’d like to pick up your own copy (ebook, paperback, and large print), you can do so at your favorite online retailer:

This post is part of my series on “Publishing a Cozy Mystery.” This series isn’t meant to tell you how you have to go about it and dictate what’s right or wrong. Instead, I’m sharing my personal journey from writing my initial draft to seeing my first book, Murder at the Marina, be released. I’ll talk about the good, bad, and the ugly. And trust me, there was plenty of ugly along the way.

While some people look at stats for the first 30 days after a release (the supposed 30-day cliff), I decided to make things easier on myself from a reporting perspective and look at the numbers from the release date of June 21, 2018 to the end of July 2018. That’s roughly a six week period.

What numbers are important?

So, what numbers did I look at and why? The obvious one that I was interested in was the total number of sales. Now, this may disappoint some of you, but I’m not planning on sharing that here. What I can say is that my expectations were greatly exceeded, which is in large part due to all of the wonderful people who helped spread the word for me on social media. Thank you!

The other numbers I spent time poring over had to do with sales by format and where books were sold. I also got a kick out of checking out what I like to call my “popularity” stats. Let’s dive into the numbers, shall we?

Sales by Format

I’ve mentioned before how surprised I am at how many people purchased the paperback version of Murder at the Marina. If you look at the chart below, you’ll see that 10% of people bought paperbacks and 90% bought ebooks.

On a whim, I also created a large print version and, while I didn’t sell any of those during June and July, I have sold a few during the past month. (If you’re interested in learning more about large print, I found Joanna Penn’s article on the subject helpful.)

Ebook Sales by Retailer

Because I decided to go wide instead of be exclusive with Amazon, I was really interested in seeing how many books I sold on non-Amazon sites. No surprise that the bulk of the sales were on Amazon (88%), but I was pleased to see that I sold a few on Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, and Overdrive.

Hopefully, the percentage of non-Amazon sales will increase over time.

NOTE: The percentages below don’t add up due to rounding.

Ebook Sales by Country

I love the idea of knowing that people around the world are reading my book, so I was thrilled to see that 17% of my sales came from outside the States. Most of them came from the United Kingdom, followed by Australia, Canada, and EU countries. And I’d love to know who is reading Murder at the Marina in Japan and Brazil.

Popularity Stats

Come on, admit it, sometimes you compare yourself to other people, don’t you? You like to see how you rank against others. Or is that just me?

In any case, it’s a bad idea to get too caught up in this as a writer. Reading all of the success stories out there about folks who are top of the charts, pulling in the big bucks, or have a million 5-star reviews can get a tad depressing. It’s enough to almost make you forget what the real joy of writing is about—having fun creating imaginary worlds, people, and situations.

But, I confess, I did check my Amazon popularity stats during my release. Like where Murder at the Marina ranked on the Hot New Releases list. It peaked at #81 in the Cozy Animal Mystery sub-category at one point. (The lists are updated hourly.) We can all thank Mrs. Moto, the best clue-finding feline in the business for that.

Amazon’s Author Central lets you check how popular your book is compared to others. The Kindle edition of Murder at the Marina ranked #30,571 on release day, peaked at #25,456 a week late, and has been on a roller coaster ride ever since. When some sales comes through, it perks back up, when sales are quiet, it plummets down the ranks.

To be honest, I wouldn’t expect to do great in Amazon rankings due to the fact that I’m not exclusive to Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited. From my understanding, pages reads and increased visibility in the Amazon store can do a lot to boost your position on the charts.

But it’s not just about your books, Amazon gets personal and give you an author rank. My highest ranking (#38,745) was actually when Murder at the Marina was on pre-order. It stayed above the 100k mark for a couple of weeks after the release, then tumbled down the charts after that.

If you’re an author, what kinds of numbers do you track? If you’re a reader, do you pay attention to book rankings?